The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident Part 20

Orr followed him to the other room. In it was a sideboard on which decanters stood.

"Will you have something?"

Orr thanked him. Annandale helped himself to a liquor. As he did so the decanter clicked against the gla.s.s and, as he raised the gla.s.s, Orr saw that his hand shook.

"It is very strange," said Annandale, repeating almost the words which Orr had used to Sylvia. "I had no cause to love the man, but----"

"I know," Orr interrupted. "My cousin told me. But if I were you I would not talk of it. She seemed worried lest you might."

Annandale put down the gla.s.s. He was quite flushed. "But," he exclaimed, "she does not suspect me!"

"Of course not. On the contrary. But then the fact suggests a motive which, coupled with any threat you may have made, might, in the absence of other clues, made a prima facie case, which to say the least, don't you see, would be nasty."

"d.a.m.nably so!" Annandale muttered dumbly. Then, raising the gla.s.s again, he threw out: "But what nonsense! A little after you had all gone from here I went to your cousin's----"

"Yes. I know you did. I met you on the stoop."

"Did you?" said Annandale with marked surprise.

"Why, yes. Don't you remember?"

Annandale pa.s.sed a hand across his face and sat down.

"Don't you remember?" Orr reiterated.

Annandale shook his head.

"But you remember where you went afterward, don't you? Did you come directly here?"

Annandale made no answer.

"Can't you tell me?" Orr asked. "Or is it that you don't wish to?"

On a mantel opposite the sideboard a clock was ticking. For awhile in the room only that ticking could be heard.

"Can't you?" Orr asked again.

Annandale stood up. It was as though the question had prodded him. He moved to the sideboard. But Orr got in his way.

"Don't drink any more. Try to think."

"I can't," said Annandale. He moved back and sat down. In his face the flush had deepened. It looked mottled. He himself looked ill.

Orr, a hand extended on the sideboard, beat on it a brief tattoo.

"This is rather tedious," he said at last. "It is only a little less than a year ago that you had a similar lapse. Oddly enough, it began as this has, at my cousin's house. But we must try to keep her out of the matter. Were she asked what you said it might be embarra.s.sing, don't you think?"

"What I said? What did I say?"

Annandale as he spoke looked so abject that Orr feared that he might go to pieces there and then. Humanely he changed the subject. "Of course, whoever did it will be nabbed. Meanwhile, it is only to prevent any stupid suspicions that I venture to advise. By the way, have you any idea who could have done it?"

Annandale again ran his hand across his eyes; then, looking up at Orr, he replied: "Not one--unless he did it himself."

"H'm. Well, yes. That might be. But what does Mrs. Annandale think?"

"She does not know. Or, at least, she did not at noon. I heard it then from Harris. I told him not to say anything to her. Shortly after, as I understood, she went out, to her mother's, I believe, though, of course, since then----"

The sentence was not completed. f.a.n.n.y was entering the room. Orr had always admired her very much, but never so much as then. She was dressed in black, which is becoming to blonds, and richly dressed, he afterward thought, he could not be sure for he lacked the huckster's eye. But his admiration was not on this occasion induced by her looks, though a woman's looks, when she has any, are always notable if unnoticed factors. His admiration was caused by the way she took things.

With the air of one inquiring the time of day she glanced at Annandale and asked, almost with a lisp: "Why didn't you shoot me?"

Orr turned to Annandale. He was rising. From his face the flush had gone. He was lurid. The word lurid is used because it is more dramatic than its synonym, ghastly. And here was drama, real drama, in real life.

"f.a.n.n.y, you don't think that I----"

Drama, real drama, is an enjoyable rarity. Orr longed to stay and see it out. But, obviously, anything of the kind would have been worse than indiscreet. He picked up his hat.

"f.a.n.n.y," Annandale repeated, "you can't think----"

"Oh," she interrupted, "you see you made it quite unnecessary for me to think at all. You told me beforehand. Wasn't it considerate?" she added, turning to Orr.

"But I did not mean it," cried Annandale. "As G.o.d is my witness----"

"I am a witness," f.a.n.n.y interjected, interrupting him again. But the interruption was effected without abruptness, without apparent emotion, sweetly, almost lispingly, with a modulation of the voice that was restful to the ear. "And," she added, in the same sugary, leisurely way, but raising now a slender finger gloved in white, "I will swear to what you said."

At this Orr swam, or tried to swim, to the rescue. "Surely," he protested, "you would not do that?"

"Wouldn't I?" she answered, addressing Orr and speaking in the same smiling, seductive fashion that she had to Annandale. "Wouldn't I, indeed! Really, believe me, you are quite in error."

Annandale fell back in the chair from which he had arisen. "f.a.n.n.y," he gasped, "I did not know a woman could hate like that."

f.a.n.n.y smiled afresh. "No? Is it possible? But, then, perhaps, you never knew how a woman could love."

She gave a little nod. It was as though she were adding, "Take that."

Orr was b.u.t.toning a glove, preparing to retreat. She turned to him: "Don't go. Stay and have a drink with Arthur. He looks as though he needed one."

She moved back.

"Yes, stay," she continued. "I am going." Once more the slender finger gloved in white was raised. "Arthur Annandale, never willingly will I see you again--except in court. For to court I shall go, if only to see you sentenced."

At that, at the splendid ferocity of it, Orr looked at Annandale. When he turned to look at f.a.n.n.y, silently, no doubt smilingly, she had gone.

CHAPTER VI

WHAT THE PAPERS SAID